A Convenient Game Launcher for Linux

Howdy! It’s me again bothering you with this tool for the ultimate convenience. If you are gaming on Linux using all the tools, platforms and applications such as Wine (32-bit and 64-bit prefixes) and Winetricks, Steam, PlayOnLinux, nVidia Optimus and more it can become a little bit of a nuisance that you have to remember which game to launch under which Wine prefix or Steam version. For instance, I myself have three different steam clients (Linux native as well as 32-bit and 64-bit PlayOnLinux drives for Windows Games). So I decided to quickly scribble together a minimalistic launcher for all my applications that gets rid of these “sorrows” for me. Each time I install a game I then just have to add another case to this launcher.sh.

Download the launcher!

Download link provided in the sidebar and as always don’t forget to do chmod +x ./launcher.sh and in this case also customize this template to your needs.

By the way, if you don’t know how to launch Steam games from the command line… there’s an example in the code. If you don’t use PlayOnLinux, but plain Wine, then you first need to export the Wine prefix path and secondly point Wine to the Steam executable. Don’t forget the “…”, though! To find the App ID of a Steam game simply go to the Steam store. The ID is simply the number in the URL. Alternatively use SteamDB, link provided in the sidebar – very useful!